We’re sure Beat readers were as pleased as we were when the incredibly talented artist/animator Shaun Tan won the Oscar™ for Best Animated Short Film last weekend for THE LOST THING. Nine years in the making, the short is based on his book of the same name, which has been basically unavailable in the US for a while now.

However, a NEW edition has just come out from Scholastic in a collection called LOST & FOUND which includes not only THE LOST THING but two other magical Tan tales, THE RED TREE and THE RABBIT.

The excitement has already begun at the Emerald City Comicon, but in case you need more info, here you go.

This is the first time the show has run three days, but it has definitely joined HeroesCon, Baltimore Comics Con, WonderCon, and a few others as one of the premier “regional” shows of the year. If things were different we’d be there slurping oysters right this minute, but hopefully next year.

A little catch-up here on a potentially groundbreaking legal story that we don’t have time to completely break out, but basically early Betty Boop cartoons are now in the public domain, despite Fleischer Studios still owning the trademark and licensing out contemporary versions of Betty Boop (which you see all over the place on purses, Ts and so on.)

“I look at the new Blue Beetle, which was really well done and really entertaining, even though it didn’t sell at all. The new things in the universe are pretty much impossible, and new things out of the universe are pretty unlikely, because people won’t try new things. I hope I’m wrong and there’s some wonderful new thing. Maybe we’ll get lucky and Static will break, but I don’t think people will try it, or that people at comics stores will even care. That book should have come out in 2002 when it was the #2 cartoon on television, and not 2010 when it was in reruns on Disney XD.”

January wasn’t all bad news in the comics industry as Image had a strong month. Spawn #200 sold a crazy amount of issues thanks to its many variant copies, while The Walking Dead continues to rise and the new weekly reprints did fairly well. The biggest launches were a Darth Vader miniseries from Dark Horse, and IDW’s zombie crossover series Infestation.

Darna is a popular Filipino superheroine created by Mars Ravelo and Nestor Redondo in 1950. Contemporary creators Gerry Alanguilan (story and art page 1) and Arnold Arre (letters and art pages 2-8) have created a 9 page tribute called DARNA LIVES! which is inspired by Alan Moore’s Marvelman.